Multilingual Computing at C-DAC Mumbai

The Center for Development of Advanced Computing (CDAC) Mumbai is actively involved in Research and Development into the areas of Language computing and has produced many products targeted to bridge the language barrier in the era of digitization.

Knowledge Based Computer Systems (KBCS) at CDAC Mumbai is working in the field Natural Language Processing (NLP), Machine learning (ML), Data Mining (DM), Expert systems (ES), etc. and following are some of the prominent works in the area of multilingual computing

1. MaTra
2. Xlit
3. StatMT
4. SuTra
5. Rupantar
6. ChitranTran

MaTra:

MaTra is a Fully-Automatic English to Hindi Indicative Machine Translation System. The approach taken by MaTra is 'Transfer Based' and is very well appreciated in the research community. MaTra is targeted to work with text in open domains like World Wide Web documents and news stories.

System uri : http://cdacmumbai.in/matra/

Salient Features:

• Hybrid (Rule Based and Statistical) approach to Machine Translation
• Uses target language independent intermediate structured representation and so can be easily adopted for English to other Indian languages machine translation systems

Figure 1:MaTra: Machine Translation System

Xlit:

Xlit is a transliteration tool to convert words from English to Indian languages and back, without losing the phonetic characteristics. It transliterates the words from English to Indian language, eg. converts 'bharat' to 'भारत', 'school' to 'स्कूल', etc. It also suggests more than one option for the given word, like भरत, भारात, बहारत, etc. for 'bharat'. Prototypes are available for Hindi, Marathi, Urdu and Kannada. XlitHindi – an extension for the OpenOffice Writer is available for download at the URL:

http://extensions.services.openoffice.org/project/xlithindi

System uri: http://cdacmumbai.in/xlit/editor/

Salient Features:

• Can be easily integrated into any desktop or web application
• Uses generalized framework for developing any language pair transliteration system

Figure 2 Xlit: A transliteration system

StatMT:

StatMT is a Statistical Machine Translation (SMT) system which translates the source language sentences (e.g., English) to target language sentences (e.g. Hindi, Marathi, Bengali, etc.) using statistical models. Stat MT system is part of English to Indian Languages Machine Translation System (E-ILMT) consortium and aims to design and deploy a Machine Translation System from English to Indian Languages in Tourism and Healthcare Domains. More information about the system can be found at http://www.cdacmumbai.in/e-ilmt.

SuTra:

Sutra is a multi-user translation assistance tool that makes intelligent suggestions to translators on possible reuse of translations from older version systems or systems with similar domains. The aim is to reduce the translator's efforts and make available translated versions of applications in least possible time. System is released under open source and is available at http://sourceforge.net/projects/sutra/.

Figure 3SuTra: An Intelligent Suggestive Translator for Localisation

Rupantar:

Rupantar is an utility to write in Indian languages using Roman Script. It also allows you to convert text from one script to other script, ex. 'रमेश' in Hindi to ‘ரமேஷ்’ in Tamil. It uses a key map based technique for writing and conversion.

System uri: http://www.cdacmumbai.in/rupantar

Salient Features:

• Easy integration with other desktop and web applications
• Fast and lightweight application

Figure 4: Rupantar

ChitranTran:

ChitranTran is an utility to extract and transliterate text from images. Available prototype can extract text in English and Hindi and can tranliterate that to other Indian languages.

System uri: http://202.141.152.1/xlit/chitrantran/

Salient Features:

• Easy integration with other desktop and web applications
• Support for Indian language text extraction and transliteration

Figure 5 ChitranTran

Here we are with a new URL for MaTra2

We are happy to announce the new URL of the MaTra2, its: http://www.cdacmumbai.in/matra/
Now you can use the English to Hindi MT system by clicking the above link.
For any queries contact us at kbcs@cdacmumbai.in .

Two day Workshop on Machine Learning (19-20 Dece. 2008)

Machine Learning

Machine Learning (ML) is a subfield of artificial intelligence (AI) that is concerned with the design and development of algorithms and techniques that allow computers to "learn". ML is one of the active areas of research in computer science and currently has a large repository of practically useable techniques and algorithms for a wide range of tasks. Typical ML problems include automatic clustering of a set of items, automatic classification (spam mail, documents, etc.), automatic learning/refinement of rules for a diagnostic system, predictive modelling, etc.

ML methods have evolved from various domains such as Statistics, Information theory, Biology and Control theory. ML has a wide spectrum of applications including natural language processing (NLP), pattern recognition, search engines, medical diagnosis, bioinformatics and chemical informatics, fraud detection, stock market analysis, speech and handwriting recognition, robotics, intelligent computer games etc.

About the Workshop

The workshop is meant to provide a comprehensive introduction to Machine Learning, focusing on conceptual understanding of popular ML algorithms and practical applications. Apart from covering popular ML techniques such as Artificial Neural Network (ANN), Support Vector Machine (SVM) and Genetic Algorithms (GA) we will discuss modelling of a problem for using machine learning including input-output transformation. Participant will get hands on experience with these algorithms; using toolkits such as Weka.

Workshop Outline

* Introduction to Machine Learning
* Inductive Learning
* Artificial Neural Network
* Support Vector Machine
* Clustering
* Input-output transformation for ML
* Application case studies
* Lab sessions

Target Audience

The workshop is targeted at academic and industry professionals interested in Machine Learning; professionals working in the area of information retrieval, language processing, document analysis, speech recognition and students interested in the area of Machine Learning. Some familiarity with computer programming will be desirable – language does not matter.

Registration Details

Registration Fee: Rs. 1000/- per participant for academic & non-profit organizations, and Rs. 1500/- per participant for others, payable by a crossed demand draft drawn in favour of 'C-DAC Mumbai' payable at Mumbai. The fee covers lunch, refreshments, and workshop material. The complete registration form fee should be sent to the Course Administration section C-DAC, Kharghar, Mumbai.

Accommodation Availability

Limited shared Non-A/C accommodation is available at the Navi Mumbai Campus Hostel, at Rs.150/- per person per day.

Knowledge Based Computer Systems Division

The Knowledge Based Computer Systems (KBCS) division carries out research and development in selected subfields of Artificial Intelligence. Its core areas of research are Natural Language Processing, Expert Systems, Case Based Reasoning, Information Retrieval, Data Mining, Soft Computing, and Planning and Scheduling.

About C-DAC Mumbai

The Centre for Development of Advanced Computing, Mumbai (formerly National Centre for Software Technology) is a scientific society involved in the Research and Development into various areas of Software Technology and related disciplines with an objective to create focus on advanced information technologies, high-end academics & training relevant to R&D societies.

Contact Us

Knowledge Based Computer Systems (KBCS) Division
Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (Formerly NCST)
Raintree Marg, Near Bharti Vidyapeeth
Opp. Kharghar Railway Station
Sector 7, CBD Belapur
Navi Mumbai 400 614

E-mail: Click here to mail
Telephone: +91-22-27565303-05 Fax: +91-22-27560004


for more information Visit: http://www.cdacmumbai.in

MaTra : An English to Hindi machine translation system

MaTra
Translating Languages ....
Revolutionizing Lives................!

India is a linguistically rich nation with 22 national languages recognized by the constitution of India, of which Hindi is the official language. Besides, there are 844 different dialects that are practised in various parts of the country. Being a developing nation India is in great need of information revolution for the growth of the geographically distributed multilingual society. Internet has helped in bridging this geographical barrier but the language barrier remains unanswered as only less than 10% of the population speaks English. 'MaTra' is an attempt to break this barrier.

The current version of 'MaTra' is a step towards the mission of information revolution for the millions of lives in this nation. MaTra, a fully-automatic indicative English-Hindi machine translation system, translates text in English to Hindi. Though the system is designed to support every domain, it focuses on ‘News’ and ‘Medical’ domains as of now. The system works well for simple sentences.

We are working on translation of other types of sentences such as compound, complex, interrogative, exclamatory, etc.

Using MaTra is simple, to try it please click here or try this :

http://www.cdacmumbai.in/matra

For recent updates on MaTra you can follow this Blog!